They were little girls when the NHS was created, offering universal health care to everyone whether they could afford it or not.

Today, Pat Watts, now 77, and Janet Harley, 76, pull on their striped uniforms two nights a week to work as midwifery assistants at Hull Women and Children’s Hospital.

Pat, a mum of two from Beverley with four grandchildren and one great grandchild and another on the way, said:  “I can’t imagine not doing this because it’s been part of my life for so long.

“When people see me, they don’t ask me how I am. Nowadays, the first thing they say is ‘Are you still here?’

“My husband does mention to me from time to time about retiring. But that’s because he has to drive me to work so it means he wants to watch the cricket or go swimming.”

Janet, who has two children and two grandchildren, said: “I reduced my hours from 30 to 20 a couple of years ago with views of trying to wean myself off work. But I’m still here.

“It has been a privilege to work for the NHS all these years. I’ve seen so many changes but I’m still smiling.”

Pat (above left) was born in 1941 and became a nursing cadet at Beverley Westwood. She started nursing training at 18 but it halted when she married husband John a year later.

She worked as an auxiliary until her first daughter Sharon was born in 1962. Pat wanted to return to the Westwood after Sharon was born but there were no vacancies so she went to work instead at a local hospital in Brandesburton.

Pat Watts, when she started her training

She had second daughter Deborah in 1965 and returned to the Westwood Hospital in 1966, working nightshift on the wards.

She transferred to the Cottage Hospital annexe, looking after women on gynaecology wards and working alongside a night sister.

The introduction of the State Enrolled Nurse changed the tasks of an auxiliary. Pat was moved back to the Westwood when the annexe was closed and joined the maternity team.

When maternity services moved from Beverley, Pat transferred to Castle Hill as a midwifery assistant, supporting women in the labour and postnatal wards.

Pat worked in the Jubilee Birth Centre, supporting midwives to look after women and training in baby massage before the centre closed in 2012.

She then transferred to Hull Women and Children’s Hospital and now works two nights a week on Maple Ward, the antenatal ward for women requiring additional care or who are due to be induced, and Rowan Ward, which looks after women after their babies are born.

Pat supports the midwives and medical staff looking after the women, helps the women through the night and is a vital support to the younger, less experienced staff who can rely on Pat’s vast knowledge.

“I’ve done all my NVQs,” said Pat. “I know it’s important to keep up with my training online.

“I just really like looking after the women and their partners. This is such a friendly team and it’s really nice to be part of it.”

Janet (above right) started her orthopaedic training at Bridge of Earn Hospital in Scotland and, even as a student nurse, took charge of a busy Nightingale ward at night, with the night sisters visiting twice or three times a night to check all was well.

She married husband Robert, who was in the forces, and they moved south, with Janet joining maternity services at a cottage hospital in Aldershot and then Frimley Park Hospital in Hampshire.

Robert got a posting in Yorkshire and Janet visited Beverley Westwood Hospital to see about a job.

Janet Harley, earlier in her career

“I got an interview and was asked by Matron if I could start that night as they were short of staff on the baby care unit,” she said.

Janet moved to Castle Hill Hospital and worked on the special care baby unit and on the labour and delivery ward before transferring to the new Hull Women and Children’s Hospital in 2003.

She worked on the labour and delivery ward for 14 years before moving to Maple Ward and cut her hours back last year, working just two night shifts a week.

“I still continue to do labour ward, theatres and work in the midwifery-led unit and I keep myself up-to-date with all the study days and online training,” she said.

“I enjoy the teamwork. I was asked many times over the years if I wanted to do my midwifery training but my priorities then were my two children and childcare was difficult in those days.

“I’ve been on nights for 59 years now and they fit well into my lifestyle.

“People call me the ‘lovely little lady’. I always say I was six foot when I started nursing, now I’m down to four foot nothing.”

A Cliff Richard fan has raised hundreds of pounds for a breast screening service after wearing a bright pink wig to meet her idol.

Jenny Dickinson, 68, is one of a group of women calling themselves “Cliff’s Pink Ladies” on Facebook because they wear pink to every one of the superstar’s concerts to raise awareness for breast cancer.

Now, after undergoing surgery twice to remove cysts, Jenny has raised £300 for Humberside Breast Screening Unit, based at Castle Hill Hospital, after she was sponsored to wear her bright pink wig to meet Sir Cliff during his “Singalong with Cliff” at his vineyard in Portugal.

Jenny Dickinson with Sir Cliff Richard

Jenny said: “Cliff knew exactly what I was doing and why I was wearing the wig. He’s heard all about it because it was posted all over Facebook and he reads all about what we get up to.

“When he saw me, he just said I looked edible and I got three photographs taken with him.

“I’m glad to have raised the money for the unit but it seems so little after all you have done for me.”

Lesley Peacock, programme manager at Humberside Breast Screening, said: “We’re really grateful to Jenny for her support.

“Not only has Jenny raised some much-needed funds for us, she’s also helped us raise awareness of the importance of women coming for regular screening.”

Jenny, who lives in Stoneferry, east Hull, with husband Ron, has seen Sir Cliff hundreds of times in concerts, travelling all over the country to watch him in action.

“He’s just the perfect package,” she said.

In the 1980s, Jenny underwent surgery at the Westwood Hospital in Beverley to remove a cyst.

She discovered a larger lump in her breast three years ago and doctors discovered it was a Cyst of Montgomery, a benign breast mass, and she underwent an immediate biopsy. Tests showed the cyst was calcifying so she had surgery to remove it from her breast.

Keen caravaners, the couple spent much of their time at Allerthorpe Lakeland Park just outside Pocklington and Jenny came up with an idea to raise money for the unit after one of their friends from the site underwent a mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

“Every year, Cliff has a signing for his fans at his vineyard in Portugal where you can go and get your photograph taken with him,” she said.

“Our friends at the site said they’d sponsor me if I wore my pink wig to go to the signing so that’s what I did.

“There were 1,400 people and he posed for photographs with all of us again.

“I’ve had photographs of me with him but never one showing my face. Now, I’ve got one face-on with him.”

Visitors and staff at East Yorkshire’s hospitals will be using their coffee breaks to send children to school in Uganda.

Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is teaming up with Hull Collegiate to support the school’s “Safi Coffee” initiative to pay for Ugandan children to go to school and break the cycle of poverty.

Profits from every cup of coffee sold to staff or visitors will help to fund the £180 it costs to send a child in Uganda to school for a year.

Ann Mason, the trust’s head of facilities, said the trust will sell Safi Coffee at the café on the ground floor of Hull Women and Children’s Hospital from today.

She said: “As one of Hull’s largest employers, we feel we have a social obligation to support the schools in our area. We heard about this project and thought this was a very good idea for a very good cause.”

Hull Collegiate students were inspired to set up the initiative during a school trip to the south west region in 2015 when they saw pre-school children in their bare feet using machetes on farmland because they did not have the chance to go to school.

When they found out it cost just £180 to pay for a child to attend school in Uganda for a year, including the cost of accommodation, food, uniform and healthcare, the school set up Safi Coffee – which means pure and fresh in Swahili – to sell Ugandan coffee.

Using grant funding and the support of local businesses, the school imports Ugandan coffee to sell across the UK, with every penny of profit from Safi Coffee paying for Ugandan children to go to school.

Rated as one of the best tasting coffees in the world and the first time the gourmet coffee has been sold in Europe, the initiative also creates farming jobs.

Head of Estates Ann Mason with Catering Manager Neil Woods

The school’s website states: “Why would we do this? Why not? We have no extravagant CEO salaries to pay, no shareholders to satisfy; just a group of pupils determined to make a difference.

“Children have designed the packaging, painted the logo and are managing the accounts. They are learning about key business skills. It makes sense, for both us and them. It makes a difference.”

Talks to finalise the trial project are now being held between the hospital trust and the school staff.

Ann Mason said: “Not only will we promote and sell the coffee in our outlet, we’ll also sell the coffee beans and the ground coffee. Every penny of profit from their sales will go to their cause.

“We’re inviting students from the school to set up a stand in the café where they can give information to the public about their project to send children to school in Uganda.”

Hospital staff are raising funds for camp beds so families can stay with their loved ones approaching the end of their lives.

Ward 30 at the Queen’s Centre at Castle Hill Hospital provides recliner chairs so relatives can stay next to their family member in their final hours.

However, staff will hold a Disco Fever night and a raffle next month to raise money to pay for camp beds so relatives can rest properly next to the people they love.

Staff nurse Millie Heeley said: “Some of our patients come to us for end of life care and relatives come to stay with them.

“We offer hospitality rooms for relatives off the ward but a lot of people don’t want to leave their family members and want to stay right next to them.

“We have recliner chairs but it’s not quite the same as lying down properly so we thought we would try and raise money for camp beds so people can be as close as possible but still get some rest.”

The ward raised more than £1,000 last year to pay for an ECG machine to help patients.

Julie Simpson, who volunteered on the oncology ward for four months before being offered a job as a health care assistant 18 months ago, came up with the idea to help patients and their families this year.

Helped by clinical supporter worker Sue Hemsworth, Julie has been collecting raffle prizes and donations to help raise as much money as possible for the camp beds.

She said: “We’ve got the hospitality suite but, to me, that defeats the purpose because the families want to be close to their loved one.

“I just thought camp beds would be a better idea because we’ve got them right here, as and when we need them, and we can store them when we don’t need them.”

The 1970s, 80s and 90s themed Disco Fever night will be held in the Kenilworth Suite at the Good Fellowship in Cottingham Road, Hull, on Friday, July 6.

Tickets costing £5 can be obtained from the Good Fellowship, from Ward 30 or at the door of the venue on the night.

Ward sister Hayley Butler said: “I’m really proud of the team for organizing another charity night. The overnight equipment will make such a difference to patients and their relatives on the ward.”

A hospital staff choir is hosting a special “The Greatest Showman” singalong this weekend to raise funds for a charity supporting people with motor neurone disease.

The choir at Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is staging the event in honour of Consultant Histopathologist Dr Anne Campbell, a member of the choir in the soprano section recently diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND).

Made up of members of staff working in different departments at Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital, the choir aims to raise funds for the Hull and East Riding branch of the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

The choir, with Dr Anne Campbell, far right

Trust web developer Bonnie Gray, one of the choir’s tenors, said: “Although Anne is not able to sing with us now, she has many friends in the choir and always brings a smile to everyone’s face.

“We all miss her enthusiasm, her beautiful singing voice and her willingness to help new members learn their harmonies so we wanted to do something to help the charity supporting people with the condition.

“We’re hoping Anne will be here with us on the night as our very special guest of honour to show her just how much we appreciate her.”

The event at the lecture theatre in the Medical Education Centre at Hull Royal Infirmary from 7pm on Saturday is almost sold out with only a handful of the tickets still available from the choir’s Facebook page.

Although tickets are free, people are being asked to contribute a minimum donation of £5 to go to the charity. Drinks and cinema snacks will also be on sale, with all proceeds going to the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

Prospective parents in Hull will now be able to book classes to help them prepare for the birth of their babies through a new website created by Hull Women and Children’s Hospital.

Midwives worked with Bonnie Gray, web developer at Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, to design a bespoke website for new parents.

The website www.hey.nhs.uk/heybaby enables women registered with a Hull GP to book parenting classes after they have had their 20-week scan.

Midwife Melanie Lee, who leads the Hey Baby team, said: “We’ve created an easy-to-navigate website which gives women the chance to book classes online in an area of their choice and at a time to suit them.

“In the past, women were just given a date and told to attend their nearest venue but our new website allows us to be more flexible in our approach to accommodate more people’s needs and wishes.”

Web Developer Bonnie Gray

Janet Cairns, Head of Midwifery, said parenting classes provide the opportunity for couples  to discuss their birth plans with midwives and birth educators, find out more about labour and learn essential skills to help them look after their new born babies in the early days after birth.

She said: “Our new website also gives information about our hugely popular Hey Baby Carousel events, which are drop-in sessions held for women and partners on the last Wednesday of every month.

“Although the website has just been developed, we are hoping to add information to it over the coming months, including details of our staff, our service and need-to-know information to help families through their pregnancy journeys.”

The next Carousel will take place on Wednesday, June 27, between 6pm and 8pm with a range of stalls and displays to guide people through each stage of their pregnancy. People can chat to our team of midwives, birth educators and childcare experts at the event.

Women who bring their hand-held notes can also have the whooping cough vaccine, offering vital protection to their newborn babies, at the event from the team of midwives trained in administering the injection.

There’s no need to book an appointment for Carousel and the Orchard Café will be open to serve snacks and refreshments.

People who submitted self-referral forms to the trust over the past few days are being asked to resubmit their forms.

Due to circumstances beyond the trust’s control, maternity self-referral forms, antenatal class booking forms and forms to make compliments, comments, concerns or complaints were not submitted to the trust between 5pm on Friday, June 15, and 2pm on Monday, June 18.

The trust took immediate steps to address and log the issue as soon as web staff became aware that forms had been blocked by an external service connected to its website.

If you think this may have affected you, please visit our website and complete the form again. The links are as follows:

Maternity Self-Referral Form: https://www.hey.nhs.uk/maternity/self-referral/

Antenatal Class Booking Form: https://www.hey.nhs.uk/heybaby/hull-antenatal-classes/

Compliments, Comments, Concerns or Complaints Form: https://www.hey.nhs.uk/patients-and-visitors/feedback/

We apologise for any inconvenience caused and have put measures into place to ensure this does not happen again.

A hospital service is celebrating six years of keeping people who require feeding intravenously out of hospital and in their own homes.

The Nutrition Team at Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust was launched in June 2012 to care for patients with intestinal failure who require parenteral nutrition (PN) to prevent malnutrition and or dehydration.

Patients receive appropriate nutrients and dietary minerals administered intravenously through an external “Tunnelled lines” or Peripherally Inserted Central Catheters known as PICC lines.

The service, which is currently looking after around 40 patients at home as well as patients at Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill, has benefited scores of people who can now stay at home instead of spending months in a hospital bed.

Philippa MacElhinney, Clinical Nurse Specialist in PN, said: “We see patients who require PN as part of their short-term recovery right up to those who will require long term feeding for the rest of their lives.

“When the service was first launched, there was one patient who had been in hospital for nine months and another for a year because they were on PN and there was no dedicated service for them.

“It was the Nutrition Team’s main priority to ensure a service was set up.

“Now, we can give people a far better quality of life because they can maintain their independence by staying at home or holding down a job instead of remaining in hospital for months on end.”

Before the service was introduced, PN patients had to either stay in hospital to receive their treatment or come into hospital for up to four to six hours, three to four times a week, to ensure their nutritional or hydration needs were being met.

With the numbers of PN patients increasing, the Nutrition Team had to find alternative ways of discharging patients safely back home with appropriate levels of care and support.

The Nutrition Team ensures patients and their families are trained to look after their own PICC lines to self-administer their treatment and prevent infection, ensuring wards have capacity to care for sick people requiring inpatient care.

As well as showing patients and their relatives how to look after their central lines, the Nutrition Team has also worked with nursing homes in Hull and the East Riding to ensure staff know how to deliver safe care once a patient on PN has been discharged.

The trust also commissions four domiciliary care firms to provide care to patients within their own home if they are unable to look after their treatment themselves.

Before a patient is discharged, members of the Nutrition Team meet them and their families to explain how they will benefit from the home service. Staff arrange for the patient to be referred to one of the four home care companies and order the correct equipment.

The Clinical Nurse Specialists work with dietitians and pharmacists in the nutrition team to ensure the prescriptions for PN or intravenous fluids are in place and patients are followed up once they go home.

Philippa MacElhinney said: “Some people are concerned, worried how the ‘hospital treatment’ will be delivered in their own home but we ensure they know the process before they go home”.

“We get lots of calls for support from patients and their families in the days following their discharge but those calls reduce as people become more confident in their own treatment.

Once they are discharged, patients are monitored closely until they are more confident and the GPs are kept fully informed of the care plan in place for their patient.

When heat waves or cold snaps are predicted, the Nutrition Team contacts all home patients and the home care companies to ensure patients do not require additional stock or deliveries and offer offer advice over the phone and by email.

A home parenteral nutrition support group meets twice a year where patients and their families can share their views, contribute ideas on how the service could be improved and adapted and find support from each other.

Philippa MacElhinney said: “We are very proud of the service our team offers to patients and we believe we make a real difference to their lives.”